ONTOPSYCHOLOGY AND MEMETICS

"In an excellent article Susan Blackmore summarizes her vision of memetics, and also defines a choice: «…we are meme machines, created by and for the selfish replicators. Our only possibility of freedom comes not from rebelling against the tyranny of the selfish replicators, but from realizing that there is no one to rebel against» ("New Ontopsychology”, 1/2002).
This stance is reminiscent of fatalistic thinking, nihilism, thanaticism: in the end, everything would be programmed, pre-destined – and this is indeed a position shared by the majority of individuals. In a way, it constitutes a pleasing temptation. Personally, I cannot agree with such a position for the following four reasons.
Firstly, having reached the age of sixty, I know I have enacted radical psychological, social, and ideological changes. Each time, I had the awareness that I was venturing into an unknown realm.
Secondly, I know actions and pleasures that show the evidence of autonomy, and the conscious use of stereotypes or memes in relation to the circumstances.
Thirdly, even assuming that this certainty of mine was a memetic strategy – which means that I would be a meme allowing access to new programs – I choose the constancy of my own private initiative. Let us even conjecture that the In-itself (In Sé) were a general programming agent: given the effects it produces, there is nothing better in the world.
Fourthly, each time I have entered the logic of a meme and followed it thoroughly, I have ascertained that it was a compulsively repetitive mechanism, and that it had no proper autonomy without the support of an original production.” (Antonio Meneghetti).
This book opens the possibility to original reading in our time, and the future.